I make my own home-made wine. While stirring the mixture of grape juice and yeast as instructed, I noticed that the carbon dioxide bubbles on the surface of the mixture stayed as is. However, when I continued to stir the liquid further, the bubbles started to merge and burst with loud cracking sounds. This lead to a violent chain reaction until all the bubbles almost completely disappeared even though I stopped stirring the mixture.
How is the mechanism of bubble merging explained? There must be a boundary condition where the chain reaction starts. It may be analogous to the nuclear chain reaction which is determined by the number of flying neutrons with certain momentum and kinetic energy. The same mechanism may also apply to the merging of mercury drops and water drops, along with the sustained combustion process in a fire.
"The General Theory of Chain Reaction" would make a good Ph.D. Thesis :-).
